


Softly, Gently

by illumynare



Series: Wash/Carolina Series [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, because these babies can't have fluff without angst, misc. project freelancer angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 12:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11231232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illumynare/pseuds/illumynare
Summary: Carolina knows what it means, when Wash looks like this.





	Softly, Gently

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuckerfuckingdidit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuckerfuckingdidit/gifts).



> I sent Red a Fluff Week prompt and then immediately wrote it myself like a punk. SORRY.

Carolina knows what it means, when Wash looks like this. The pinch between his eyebrows. The tension in his shoulders. She knew it well in Project Freelancer—how could she not? It was her _job_ to know what each of her squad looked like under stress, near to breaking.

Back then, she would have assigned Wash more training. She would have watched him fight through simulations in the training room, and she would have been proud of his determination. She would have thought, _He won’t break,_ and she would have slept easy that night.

That was then. This is now. This is Chorus—the planet with no simulations, where she has no faith in any plan guiding her—and Wash is marching between training rooms and strategy sessions and private meetings with Kimball and Doyle.

And it’s killing him.

It was killing them all, back in Project Freelancer, but Wash is the only one left she can help.

"Wash," she says, and he stops, turns, shoulders snapping to attention, and her throat aches with the memories, the first time she drilled him in the training room aboard the _Mother of Invention—_

_We thought we were the good guys. We thought we were going to win the war._

"Yeah, boss?"

"With me," she says, and he follows her, because Wash has always been obedient, always wanted to be _acceptable_ the same way she always wanted to be _good—_

She strangles the thought, slams down bulkheads in her mind, because some things have to stay in a dimly-lit room with a hopeless man sitting before a flickering screen.

Carolina takes Wash to the rec room, the one in the east wing where people don't usually go, and she turns to him and she says, "Armor off."

"I don't—"

"That's an order, rookie."

She starts stripping herself, because this won't work if she's locked into her own armor. Wash, after staring at her for a moment, obeys. In a few minutes, they're both naked—wrapped neck to wrist to ankle in their kevlar undersuits, but for Freelancers, that's as good as naked.

As good as dead.

Somehow, they're both still alive.

Wash looks at her a moment, then drops his gaze. He's not comfortable out of his armor, never has been since she knew him. Carolina understands that, because she never was either—

_except for a few times, wrapping herself around York and pretending the world wasn't cruel, but that was long ago and she has too many scars now to recapture that easy grace_

—too many scars on both of them, but _this_ she can do.

"At ease, soldier," she says, and at the same time she hooks her hand around the back of his neck.

He stiffens under her touch, but she ignores his discomfort and she sits down on the couch, pulling him with her.

Pulling his head into her lap.

Wash gasps with a shock she knows is more basic than sexual, is the lines of _commander_ and _soldier (_ and _dead-if-they-touch-me)_ being crossed.

"Don't move," she says, and pulls her hand forward, caressing him from the base of his neck to the crown of his skull. She feels Wash's breath huff out against her thighs.

Once upon a time, Carolina did this for York. She regrets, infinitely, that he isn't here anymore—and that she never, back in Project Freelancer, cared half this much about Wash—

But she has time now. Wash has given her time to make one thing right, and she is grateful for that as she combs her fingers back and forth through his hair, as she uses her thumbs to rub circles behind his ears.

So many things, so many _people_ have been taken from her. But Wash came back. Wash has lived through all her mistakes, all the Director's machinations, and Carolina's fingers find the warm, miraculous pulse of his temporal arteries.

She realizes that Wash is making a soft, rumbling moan, almost like a purr. He's slumped in her lap now, limp and boneless, all tension gone. His breaths are soft gusts against her thighs.

And it's not love, exactly, that Carolina feels. That will come later—after they talk, after they fight, after a tense night keeping watch together and after his fingers trace the side of her face and his lips find hers.

What she feels now is, _mine._

What she feels now is, _I will protect him,_ and that's what she promises herself as she kisses the back of his head and listens to him snore into her lap.


End file.
